fic: I want to take a breath that's true (Captain America; Steve/Bucky; g)
Happy Independence Day! Have some Steve/Bucky fic:
I want to take a breath that's true
Captain America; Steve/Bucky; g; 2,225 words
In which Steve and Bucky have breakfast in Central Park and hash out some stuff.
Happy birthday, Steve Rogers! This isn't quite what you suggested,
gwyn, but I hope it suffices. Title from Mazzy Star.
Or read it at AO3.
~*~
I want to take a breath that's true
The mission goes well and since they're in New York, they don't have to exfil or even get a hotel room to spend the night in before heading back upstate (Bucky doesn't think of the Avengers training facility as home); Stark has room for all of them at his tower.
There should be a debrief, but instead, they're all sprawled out on comfortable couches in Stark's living room, rehydrating and rehashing the fight.
"Godzilla," Steve says incredulously.
"Goddamn," Rhodes replies.
"Mechagodzilla," Stark adds, with a vaguely familiar gleam in his eye.
Both Rhodes and Ms. Potts say, "Tony, no," in sharp voices.
It's been a theme all evening.
"We could do a marathon tomorrow," he says, undaunted. "We haven't had a team movie night in a while. Though we can skip the Matthew Broderick version, slip in Pacific Rim instead." He looks at Ms. Potts. "I could build us a Jaeger."
"I think a Godzilla marathon is more than enough," she answers with an indulgent laugh.
"I always liked Mothra," Wilson says, which kicks off a lively discussion of movies Bucky hasn't seen.
He doesn't sprawl and banter with them, though he accepts the bottle of water Ms. Potts offers him before he huddles in a corner that has the best sightlines in the room while not being visible from the two walls of floor to ceiling windows. Stark may think he's safe ninety-five stories up, but if he'd been targeted by the Winter Soldier when HYDRA still controlled him, Stark would be dead.
Technically, he's not even supposed to be here. Officially, he's still on the most-wanted list of every security agency in the US and a few dozen others around the world. But he's proved repeatedly that he won't stay behind while Steve is in danger, so now he suits up with the team instead of stowing away on the quinjet and setting up his sniper's nest in secret.
Still, aside from Romanoff and Wilson, the others aren't so comfortable with him that he can join in their post-mission chat sessions without making everything awkward and weird (and he remembers now, how good he used to be at this, how before the serum, Steve was always the one who brought the conversation to a halt because he only had two modes in those days: awkward or angry, when he had to speak to people who weren't Bucky; it's just one more thing Zola took away) so when Steve heads up to his suite, Bucky follows, ignoring Stark's catcalls and insinuations. Either he's very sure Bucky's not going to kill him, or he has no sense of personal safety. Bucky hasn't known him long enough to say which, though if he's anything like his father, it might be a combination of the two.
Once they're alone, Bucky says, "You should get some sleep." Aside from thanking Ms. Potts for the water, it's the first thing he's said in the last four hours.
Steve gives him a small, pained smile and says, "You too." At the doorway to his bedroom he stops and murmurs, "Night, Buck."
Bucky waits until Steve has closed the door behind him to say it in return.
He doesn't sleep much--he doesn't need to, and he doesn't want to, because nine times out of ten, he wakes up sweating and shaking and biting back the screams HYDRA beat out of him seventy years ago. Still, he lets himself doze for a while, ears tuned to every hushed breath and muffled move Steve makes on the other side of the wall.
He startles awake a little after four am, his bladder demanding he get up. He takes care of that and since he's up anyway, he takes a shower. Romanoff and Wilson had very specific instructions about his level of hygiene when they'd first brought him back, and he's found he doesn't mind so much now that he's left alone to clean himself, and is allowed to use hot water in the process.
He's shaving when he remembers Stark's words--they're not heading back upstate in the morning. They're going to hang out and have a movie marathon, and it's going to be hours of sitting in the corner, pretending he belongs with these people, that he's a person, a hero, something more than a broken soldier Steve can't let go of.
He doesn't want to stick around for that.
He has a phone, but when he looks up train times, he learns that the first train to Albany doesn't leave Penn Station until seven fifteen. He gathers his belongings in a duffel bag he takes from the closet in the guest bedroom but when he goes back out into the living room, Steve is there, sleep-creased and confused.
"Where you going, Buck?"
"Back to base."
Steve gives him a long, searching look, and maybe the Bucky from 1943 would have squirmed under the scrutiny, but the Bucky of today has endured far worse without flinching. Still, knowing Steve as well as he does (and he does somehow, even under all the programming and the bullshit, he still knows Steve better than anyone else in the whole damn world), he braces for an argument.
"Have breakfast with me first," Steve finally says. He gives Bucky a small, hopeful smile that he knows Bucky can't resist.
And then Bucky's stomach rumbles, so he couldn't say no even if he wanted to, but he finds to his surprise that he doesn't.
"It's 4:36 am," is all he says, though.
"It's the city," Steve answers, and Bucky concedes the point with a shrug.
Steve dresses quickly and leads him through the quiet streets around the tower, north and west towards Central Park in the slow-growing gray light of pre-dawn. The sun won't come up for another forty minutes or so, but Bucky likes the city like this, cool and hushed before the rush of the day begins.
There's an all-night bodega on Fifty-Sixth between Eighth and Ninth that they stop at. Bucky hovers behind Steve while he chats with the man behind the counter and orders breakfast.
"Two bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches, please. And do you have chorizo?" The deli-man nods. "Two chorizo, egg, and cheese sandwiches, but can you make those over hard instead of scrambled? And a couple orders of hash browns?"
The deli-man nods again. "Coffee?"
"Black with two sugars for tall, dark, and silent back there, and I'll have it light with no sugar, thanks."
Bucky doesn't bother to mention that he hasn't taken his coffee that way since the war, when sugar was as precious as gold. And HYDRA had never let him have something as unnecessary as caffeine.
Steve hands the cup back to Bucky, who takes a sip and sighs in pleased surprise. It's not like the sweet, fancy coffee beverages he's become accustomed (addicted) to here in the twenty-first century, and it's not the smooth, expensive, fair-trade brew Stark makes in his own espresso machine at the tower, but it's familiar, which is enough to make it good. He's always had a sweet tooth, and this was one of the few ways he'd indulged it in the old days. He shouldn't be surprised that Steve remembers--Steve remembers things for the both of them, these days--but he is. And touched, too.
Once the sandwiches are packed in grease-stained paper bags, they walk to the park. The back of Steve's hand brushes against Bucky's, and he thinks if Steve's hands weren't full of food and coffee, he'd take hold of Bucky's, and then he dismisses the thought. They're not children, and men didn't hold hands in their day. Not in public. He gets another surprise then, because he finds himself wishing they had. Wishing they would.
He shakes his head and then shakes it again when Steve gives him a questioning look.
The park is cool and green, the grass wet with dew, so he spreads his jacket out for them to sit on. They don't speak as Steve parcels out the sandwiches and they eat in companionable silence, the only sound beyond their little pleased grunts the soft breeze through the trees.
"Why'd you wanna leave?" Steve finally asks. He's not looking at Bucky, his gaze down on his hands as he packs all their garbage into the brown paper bag the food came in. "I'm not gonna stop you. I just wanna know why."
Bucky's grateful for the reprieve. He takes another sip of his coffee, which is lukewarm now, and says, "I don't belong with them." He makes himself say, "With you."
Steve snorts, a laugh without any laughter in it. "You know that's a lie."
Bucky looks down at his metal hand, the early light of dawn making it shine softly. "Is it?"
"I think so." Steve runs a hand through his hair and then gives Bucky a rueful look. "But it's really up to you."
"You don't need me," Bucky answers, though it hurts more than he thought it would to push the words out past the tightness in his throat. "Your team needs a sniper, but that's not the same thing."
"No, though you know I always feel safer with you at my six. But you're also my friend."
Bucky slices the air with his hand, cutting him off. "I was your friend once. I'm not the same guy I was then."
"And I'm not the same guy I was when I went into the ice," Steve replies. "I'm not the same guy I was when you shipped out."
Bucky huffs, because ain't that the truth. He'd thought he was hallucinating when the six-foot-something version of Steve had picked him up off Zola's table, and sometimes he wonders if he still is, but he'd never had the imagination to come up with what's actually happened to the two of them.
"And anyway, this isn't about the team. They'll accept you if you give them the chance, and not just because you're my oldest friend. Hell, Natasha would help you regardless."
Bucky's mouth thins. He has more in common with the Widow than either of them would like to admit. Steve's not wrong about that. And she has tried to help him in her way, despite both of them knowing that needing help is a weakness and in their world, weakness equals death. Still, it would be fun to test himself against her in less than life-or-death circumstances.
"You have other friends," Bucky grinds out. "You don't need me anymore. You were doing fine before I came back."
Steve lets out another of those mirthless laughs. "I really wasn't. I was--surviving, which isn't the same thing as living. I stayed with SHIELD because of Peggy, and I've been losing her by degrees since I put the Valkyrie in the water." He ducks his head, and the same rising sun that makes his metal hand shine gives Steve a golden glow, the halo he'd always sworn he didn't have. "When I first met him, Sam asked me what makes me happy, and I--I couldn't answer him." Steve shakes his head and huffs softly. "Because it was you." He looks up and holds Bucky's gaze squarely. "It's always been you, Bucky."
Before Bucky can respond, Steve leans over and presses their mouths together. Bucky gasps at the jolt of electricity that runs through him, and grabs Steve's shoulder tightly. He should push Steve away, somewhere in the back of his mind, he knows that. But he doesn't. Instead, he tugs Steve closer and opens his lips when Steve licks at them.
Steve's kisses make Bucky shiver in ways that have nothing to do with the weather, and he loses track of time, but for once, in the heat of Steve's mouth and the thrill of his touches, Bucky doesn't care.
A memory slots into place in his mind, a familiar and lingering ache more than any actual moment in time, and he pulls away for a moment, panting into Steve's mouth. "We didn't do this before."
"No," Steve answers. "We didn't."
"But I wanted to."
"No. I mean, I don't know. I don't think so. I think I'd know." Steve shakes his head almost imperceptibly. "Anyway, you never said."
"I did," Bucky insists. He curls a hand around the nape of Steve's neck, lets his fingers slide through the short hair there and grins when Steve shivers. "I remember that. I always wanted you."
Steve glances away, his cheeks pink, and Bucky uses his other hand to tilt Steve's chin back up so he can kiss him again, deep and wet and hungry, the way he'd always wanted to. Steve clutches desperately at him, and they topple over onto the grass, laughing into each other's mouths.
"I was an idiot," Bucky murmurs.
"You weren't the only one," Steve replies, and then Bucky needs to kiss him some more, to chase that sad look off his face.
"You can go back to base if you want," Steve says when they take a brief break to breathe, "but I'd really like it if you stayed with me until I'm ready to go."
"Okay," Bucky says, brushing his nose against Steve's and making him laugh. The base isn't home, and neither is the tower, nor anywhere else on earth, unless Steve is there, too.
end
~*~
Feedback is adored.
~*~
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/761154.html.
people have commented there.
I want to take a breath that's true
Captain America; Steve/Bucky; g; 2,225 words
In which Steve and Bucky have breakfast in Central Park and hash out some stuff.
Happy birthday, Steve Rogers! This isn't quite what you suggested,
gwyn, but I hope it suffices. Title from Mazzy Star.
Or read it at AO3.
~*~
I want to take a breath that's true
The mission goes well and since they're in New York, they don't have to exfil or even get a hotel room to spend the night in before heading back upstate (Bucky doesn't think of the Avengers training facility as home); Stark has room for all of them at his tower.
There should be a debrief, but instead, they're all sprawled out on comfortable couches in Stark's living room, rehydrating and rehashing the fight.
"Godzilla," Steve says incredulously.
"Goddamn," Rhodes replies.
"Mechagodzilla," Stark adds, with a vaguely familiar gleam in his eye.
Both Rhodes and Ms. Potts say, "Tony, no," in sharp voices.
It's been a theme all evening.
"We could do a marathon tomorrow," he says, undaunted. "We haven't had a team movie night in a while. Though we can skip the Matthew Broderick version, slip in Pacific Rim instead." He looks at Ms. Potts. "I could build us a Jaeger."
"I think a Godzilla marathon is more than enough," she answers with an indulgent laugh.
"I always liked Mothra," Wilson says, which kicks off a lively discussion of movies Bucky hasn't seen.
He doesn't sprawl and banter with them, though he accepts the bottle of water Ms. Potts offers him before he huddles in a corner that has the best sightlines in the room while not being visible from the two walls of floor to ceiling windows. Stark may think he's safe ninety-five stories up, but if he'd been targeted by the Winter Soldier when HYDRA still controlled him, Stark would be dead.
Technically, he's not even supposed to be here. Officially, he's still on the most-wanted list of every security agency in the US and a few dozen others around the world. But he's proved repeatedly that he won't stay behind while Steve is in danger, so now he suits up with the team instead of stowing away on the quinjet and setting up his sniper's nest in secret.
Still, aside from Romanoff and Wilson, the others aren't so comfortable with him that he can join in their post-mission chat sessions without making everything awkward and weird (and he remembers now, how good he used to be at this, how before the serum, Steve was always the one who brought the conversation to a halt because he only had two modes in those days: awkward or angry, when he had to speak to people who weren't Bucky; it's just one more thing Zola took away) so when Steve heads up to his suite, Bucky follows, ignoring Stark's catcalls and insinuations. Either he's very sure Bucky's not going to kill him, or he has no sense of personal safety. Bucky hasn't known him long enough to say which, though if he's anything like his father, it might be a combination of the two.
Once they're alone, Bucky says, "You should get some sleep." Aside from thanking Ms. Potts for the water, it's the first thing he's said in the last four hours.
Steve gives him a small, pained smile and says, "You too." At the doorway to his bedroom he stops and murmurs, "Night, Buck."
Bucky waits until Steve has closed the door behind him to say it in return.
He doesn't sleep much--he doesn't need to, and he doesn't want to, because nine times out of ten, he wakes up sweating and shaking and biting back the screams HYDRA beat out of him seventy years ago. Still, he lets himself doze for a while, ears tuned to every hushed breath and muffled move Steve makes on the other side of the wall.
He startles awake a little after four am, his bladder demanding he get up. He takes care of that and since he's up anyway, he takes a shower. Romanoff and Wilson had very specific instructions about his level of hygiene when they'd first brought him back, and he's found he doesn't mind so much now that he's left alone to clean himself, and is allowed to use hot water in the process.
He's shaving when he remembers Stark's words--they're not heading back upstate in the morning. They're going to hang out and have a movie marathon, and it's going to be hours of sitting in the corner, pretending he belongs with these people, that he's a person, a hero, something more than a broken soldier Steve can't let go of.
He doesn't want to stick around for that.
He has a phone, but when he looks up train times, he learns that the first train to Albany doesn't leave Penn Station until seven fifteen. He gathers his belongings in a duffel bag he takes from the closet in the guest bedroom but when he goes back out into the living room, Steve is there, sleep-creased and confused.
"Where you going, Buck?"
"Back to base."
Steve gives him a long, searching look, and maybe the Bucky from 1943 would have squirmed under the scrutiny, but the Bucky of today has endured far worse without flinching. Still, knowing Steve as well as he does (and he does somehow, even under all the programming and the bullshit, he still knows Steve better than anyone else in the whole damn world), he braces for an argument.
"Have breakfast with me first," Steve finally says. He gives Bucky a small, hopeful smile that he knows Bucky can't resist.
And then Bucky's stomach rumbles, so he couldn't say no even if he wanted to, but he finds to his surprise that he doesn't.
"It's 4:36 am," is all he says, though.
"It's the city," Steve answers, and Bucky concedes the point with a shrug.
Steve dresses quickly and leads him through the quiet streets around the tower, north and west towards Central Park in the slow-growing gray light of pre-dawn. The sun won't come up for another forty minutes or so, but Bucky likes the city like this, cool and hushed before the rush of the day begins.
There's an all-night bodega on Fifty-Sixth between Eighth and Ninth that they stop at. Bucky hovers behind Steve while he chats with the man behind the counter and orders breakfast.
"Two bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches, please. And do you have chorizo?" The deli-man nods. "Two chorizo, egg, and cheese sandwiches, but can you make those over hard instead of scrambled? And a couple orders of hash browns?"
The deli-man nods again. "Coffee?"
"Black with two sugars for tall, dark, and silent back there, and I'll have it light with no sugar, thanks."
Bucky doesn't bother to mention that he hasn't taken his coffee that way since the war, when sugar was as precious as gold. And HYDRA had never let him have something as unnecessary as caffeine.
Steve hands the cup back to Bucky, who takes a sip and sighs in pleased surprise. It's not like the sweet, fancy coffee beverages he's become accustomed (addicted) to here in the twenty-first century, and it's not the smooth, expensive, fair-trade brew Stark makes in his own espresso machine at the tower, but it's familiar, which is enough to make it good. He's always had a sweet tooth, and this was one of the few ways he'd indulged it in the old days. He shouldn't be surprised that Steve remembers--Steve remembers things for the both of them, these days--but he is. And touched, too.
Once the sandwiches are packed in grease-stained paper bags, they walk to the park. The back of Steve's hand brushes against Bucky's, and he thinks if Steve's hands weren't full of food and coffee, he'd take hold of Bucky's, and then he dismisses the thought. They're not children, and men didn't hold hands in their day. Not in public. He gets another surprise then, because he finds himself wishing they had. Wishing they would.
He shakes his head and then shakes it again when Steve gives him a questioning look.
The park is cool and green, the grass wet with dew, so he spreads his jacket out for them to sit on. They don't speak as Steve parcels out the sandwiches and they eat in companionable silence, the only sound beyond their little pleased grunts the soft breeze through the trees.
"Why'd you wanna leave?" Steve finally asks. He's not looking at Bucky, his gaze down on his hands as he packs all their garbage into the brown paper bag the food came in. "I'm not gonna stop you. I just wanna know why."
Bucky's grateful for the reprieve. He takes another sip of his coffee, which is lukewarm now, and says, "I don't belong with them." He makes himself say, "With you."
Steve snorts, a laugh without any laughter in it. "You know that's a lie."
Bucky looks down at his metal hand, the early light of dawn making it shine softly. "Is it?"
"I think so." Steve runs a hand through his hair and then gives Bucky a rueful look. "But it's really up to you."
"You don't need me," Bucky answers, though it hurts more than he thought it would to push the words out past the tightness in his throat. "Your team needs a sniper, but that's not the same thing."
"No, though you know I always feel safer with you at my six. But you're also my friend."
Bucky slices the air with his hand, cutting him off. "I was your friend once. I'm not the same guy I was then."
"And I'm not the same guy I was when I went into the ice," Steve replies. "I'm not the same guy I was when you shipped out."
Bucky huffs, because ain't that the truth. He'd thought he was hallucinating when the six-foot-something version of Steve had picked him up off Zola's table, and sometimes he wonders if he still is, but he'd never had the imagination to come up with what's actually happened to the two of them.
"And anyway, this isn't about the team. They'll accept you if you give them the chance, and not just because you're my oldest friend. Hell, Natasha would help you regardless."
Bucky's mouth thins. He has more in common with the Widow than either of them would like to admit. Steve's not wrong about that. And she has tried to help him in her way, despite both of them knowing that needing help is a weakness and in their world, weakness equals death. Still, it would be fun to test himself against her in less than life-or-death circumstances.
"You have other friends," Bucky grinds out. "You don't need me anymore. You were doing fine before I came back."
Steve lets out another of those mirthless laughs. "I really wasn't. I was--surviving, which isn't the same thing as living. I stayed with SHIELD because of Peggy, and I've been losing her by degrees since I put the Valkyrie in the water." He ducks his head, and the same rising sun that makes his metal hand shine gives Steve a golden glow, the halo he'd always sworn he didn't have. "When I first met him, Sam asked me what makes me happy, and I--I couldn't answer him." Steve shakes his head and huffs softly. "Because it was you." He looks up and holds Bucky's gaze squarely. "It's always been you, Bucky."
Before Bucky can respond, Steve leans over and presses their mouths together. Bucky gasps at the jolt of electricity that runs through him, and grabs Steve's shoulder tightly. He should push Steve away, somewhere in the back of his mind, he knows that. But he doesn't. Instead, he tugs Steve closer and opens his lips when Steve licks at them.
Steve's kisses make Bucky shiver in ways that have nothing to do with the weather, and he loses track of time, but for once, in the heat of Steve's mouth and the thrill of his touches, Bucky doesn't care.
A memory slots into place in his mind, a familiar and lingering ache more than any actual moment in time, and he pulls away for a moment, panting into Steve's mouth. "We didn't do this before."
"No," Steve answers. "We didn't."
"But I wanted to."
"No. I mean, I don't know. I don't think so. I think I'd know." Steve shakes his head almost imperceptibly. "Anyway, you never said."
"I did," Bucky insists. He curls a hand around the nape of Steve's neck, lets his fingers slide through the short hair there and grins when Steve shivers. "I remember that. I always wanted you."
Steve glances away, his cheeks pink, and Bucky uses his other hand to tilt Steve's chin back up so he can kiss him again, deep and wet and hungry, the way he'd always wanted to. Steve clutches desperately at him, and they topple over onto the grass, laughing into each other's mouths.
"I was an idiot," Bucky murmurs.
"You weren't the only one," Steve replies, and then Bucky needs to kiss him some more, to chase that sad look off his face.
"You can go back to base if you want," Steve says when they take a brief break to breathe, "but I'd really like it if you stayed with me until I'm ready to go."
"Okay," Bucky says, brushing his nose against Steve's and making him laugh. The base isn't home, and neither is the tower, nor anywhere else on earth, unless Steve is there, too.
end
~*~
Feedback is adored.
~*~
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/761154.html.
people have commented there.